How To Remove Smelly Dog Odors

Too Many Dogs? Never. Too Much Odor? Probably.

Do you have a sweet new puppy that’s full of energy or a 15-year-old pooch that just lies around all day? Maybe you have two big Labradors that jump up, lick and greet every guest that arrives at your house? It doesn’t matter what breed you have, one thing that’s for sure is you’re going to be getting close and personal with some unpleasant dog odors from time to time.

Knowing that our best friend sometimes will be a bit on the smelly side, we’ve put together a number of tips to help you love him/her even more, but without having to tolerate the odor.

Step 1: Determine What’s Producing the Smell

While cat odors tend to be pretty straightforward (litter boxes or litter box misses), dog odors can be all over the place.

Which dog odors do you deal with on a regular basis?

Smelly Breath

Oily Skin/Stinky Fur

Smelly Glands

Wet Dog Odor

Make-Me-Gag Gas

Urine Accidents

Feces Accidents

Chowing down on “litter-box treat”

Stepping in smelly things outdoors

Rolling in weeds/grass/pollen

There’s probably a dozen we’ve forgotten, and even more that we don’t want to think about.

Step 2: Determine If The Smell Can Be Removed Directly.

Give A Haircut

Giving your dog a haircut can clean them up a lot. Shorter fur will help reduce some of the amounts of dirt, debris and odors they collect on them while outside and also make it easier to wipe them down when they come inside.

Give a Bath/Trim

What do you think you would smell like if you only bathed once a month? Probably not that great! Just like with body odor, some smelly dog odors can be resolved by simply giving your pooch a nice bath on a regular basis.

While you may get lucky and be able to eliminate a lot of odors simply with a bath, many other odors will not be as easily addressed. Oily Skin that contributes to smelly fur, and wet dog smell, may require changes to the diet, or may not be addressable at all. And washing your dog won’t do much to remove the smell of a pet accident from the air. If the smell can’t be removed with a good bath and trim, follow these other tips.

Change Their Diet

Talking with your veterinarian, often you can switch up the types of food you are giving them and that can have a positive effect on the oiliness of their skin, or the other odors they produce (such as gas!). We once had a little terrier with a digestive problem that required a special enzyme powder to be added to everything she ate. We could quickly smell when we forgot!

Step 3: The Secret to Finding Pet Spots

Sometimes our pups have accidents. Whether they are young and still being house trained, or whether they’re full grown and just decided they were going to chug half a gallon of water as soon as you left the house, and they couldn’t hold it until you got back home. When they have an accident, many times, you’ll be able to tell quickly where it happened. But sometimes you won’t.

A Smelly Side Story

Years ago, we paid a neighbor to watch our two dogs while we were out of town for a week. “Bring them in at night and put them in their crates, then let them out in the morning” were our instructions.

Well, our neighbor was nice enough to ignore our request, deciding that “the dogs seemed sad in the crate” where they peacefully slept every night for the prior two years. After not putting them in the crate, she then took her time coming to the house to let them outside, arriving late in the afternoon the next day. Repeat for 7 days. When we got home, the dogs had urinated in the home more than a dozen times!

At that point, it was impossible to tell with our nose alone where they had gone. Hopefully, you’ll never encounter this situation. But if the unfortunate circumstance arises in which you are hunting for elusive pet spots, there’s an easy way to find the pet spots.

Use a Blacklight Flashlight

The fastest way to find a urine spot on the carpet is by using a high powered black-light flashlight. Black lights produce a wavelength of light that will illuminate the spot on the carpet, even if you can’t see it when the lights are on. So grab a high powered black-light flashlight, turn off your lights, and walk around. Warning: You might be a little grossed out by what you find!

A Black Light Flashlight Revealing Pet Stains On The Carpet

Step 4: Focus on Long-Term Odor Elimination

While wiping, bathing, grooming your dog and changing their diet can all contribute to a reduction in odor, that often that won’t be enough. You won’t always be fortunate enough to have just bathed and groomed your pooch before they come running in the house soaking wet. You also may not be around to catch and prevent an accident from happening before the smell permeates your entire house. Therefore, it’s great to have a solution that works to remove odors all the time.

Air Purifiers for Pet Odors

When you live with a persistent odor, you can often become desensitized to it. Over time, you simply won’t notice it much, if at all. Have you ever gone to a friends house and wondered “what is that smell?”. Odds are they didn’t know their home had a smell because they’ve been living with it for so long. Don’t let your guests come over thinking “is that dog smell?”

The Fur Family Filters can remove:

Urine Smell

Feces Smell

Wet Dog Smell

Oily Skin odors

Smelly Gland odors

The Alen Fur Family Smart Bundle is designed specifically to neutralize (not just cover up) unpleasant pet odors. The air purifier’s filters contain a specially formulated odor powder which reacts with and eliminates the chemicals found in urine and feces odors. This patented odor powder makes the Fur Family filters superior to other air purifier filters which only use the less effective activated carbon to remove these chemical odors. These filters also provide highly effective allergen and dust removing capability that is standard on all Alen filters.

This bundle comes with an additional discounted filter, so you get double the filter life for a great price.

Fatima Puri

Fatima is a graduate of The University of Texas School of Journalism. She freelances for various lifestyle, health, and home design blogs. In her free time, Fatima enjoys discovering hole-in-the-wall restaurants with her coworkers.